'll never misunderstand you again! But hem!--to return to
the subject; Miss Barb--I--O well, I was going to add merely that--that,
eh--I--hem!--that, eh--O--However!" She raised her eyes and he turned
crimson as he stammered, "I--I--I've forgotten what I was going to say!"

"I can neither keep Rosemont nor sell it, Mr. March. It's yours. It's
yours every way. It's yours in the public wish; my father told me so
last night. And there's a poetic justice----"

"Poetic--O!"

"Mr. March, didn't we once agree that God gives us our lives in the
rough for us to shape them into poetry--that it's poetry, whether sad or
gay, that makes alive--and that it's only the prose that kills?"

"Oh! do you remember that?"

"Yes." Her eyes fell again. "It was the time you asked me to use your
first name."

"O! Miss Barb, are you still going to hold that against me?"

"Rosemont should be yours, Mr. March. It rhymes!" She stood up.

"No! No, no! I give it to you!" he said, springing to his feet.

"Will you, really, Mr. March?" She moved a step toward the door.

"O Miss Barb, I do! I do!"

"But your mother's consent----"

A pang of incertitude troubled his brave face for an instant, but then
he said, "Oh, there can be no doubt! Let me go and get it!" He started.

"No," she falteringly said, "don't do it."

"Yes! Yes! Say yes! Tell me to go!" He caught her hand beseechingly. As
their eyes gazed into each other's, hers suddenly filled and fell.

"Go," was her one soft word. But as he reached the door another stopped
him:

"John----"

He turned and stood trembling from head to foot, his brow fretted with
an agony of doubt. "Oh, Barbara Garnet!" he cried, "why did you say
that?"

"Johanna told me," she murmured, smiling through her tears.

He started with half-lifted arms, but stopped, turned, and with a hand
on his brow, sighed, "My mother!"

But a touch rested on his arm and a voice that was never in life to be
strange to him again said, "If you don't say 'our mother,' I won't call
you John any----"

Oh! Oh! Oh! men are so rough sometimes!

THE END.

GEORGE W. CABLE'S WRITINGS.

BONAVENTURE. A Prose Pastoral of Arcadian Louisiana.

DR. SEVIER.

THE GRANDISSIMES. A Story of Creole Life.

OLD CREOLE DAYS.

STRANGE TRUE STORIES OF LOUISIANA. Illustrated

OLD CREOLE DAYS. Cameo Edition with Etching

OLD CREOLE DAYS.

MADAME DELPHINE.

THE CREOLES OF LOUISIANA. Illustrated from drawings by Pennell.

TH